Antichamber is a mind-bending psychological exploration game where nothing can be taken for granted. Discover an Escher-like world where hallways wrap around upon each other, spaces reconfigure themselves, and accomplishing the impossible may just be the only way forward.

Recommended By Curators

Reviews

“Even as the developer told me what the game was doing to mess with my brain while I was playing it, it still succeeded in messing with my brain.”
– Rock, Paper, Shotgun

“The most tenacious, infuriating obstacle you’ll face throughout the game is yourself.”
– PC Gamer

“Every aspect of Antichamber is made to get players out of their comfort zone.”
– VentureBeat

About This Game

Antichamber is a mind-bending psychological exploration game where nothing can be taken for granted. Discover an Escher-like world where hallways wrap around upon each other, spaces reconfigure themselves, and accomplishing the impossible may just be the only way forward.

Several years in the making, Antichamber received over 25 awards and honors throughout its development, in major competitions including the Independent Games Festival, the PAX10, IndieCade and Make Something Unreal. Antichamber was also supported by the Indie Fund.

Key Features

A deeply psychological experience that will make you question everything you know about how a game works.

Mind-bending challenges that will subvert your expectations at every twist and turn.

An enormous, seamless non-Euclidean world to explore.

Lifelike soundscapes developed by Robin Arnott and an ambient soundtrack composed by Siddhartha Barnhoorn.

A gun that can create, destroy and manipulate matter, allowing you to discover new ways to overcome your surroundings.

Antichamber is easy to dismiss as a Portal clone at first glance; it is a first person puzzle game wherein you move from chamber to chamber, equipped with a puzzle “gun” which interacts with your environment. But while Portal deals mostly in learning the rules of its mechanics and then adding complexity to those mechanics, Antichamber is a game which aims to subvert your expectations about how a puzzle should fundamentally work. It makes you question the unspoken rules that video games abide by. Frequently, it is simply brilliant and mind blowing, though occasionally it’s too obscure or random for its own good (especially in later parts of the game).

There’s no real story to speak of in Antichamber, but the entire experience is expertly accented in a very sterile atmosphere and minimal graphics. Sound design is also minimal, but well done. Certain audio cues can give you hints to where you are in the world, and the simple tick-tock of a clock can become a fixture of an entire portion of the game. It’s definitely a polished game which looks and feels nice.

Of course, the real meat of Antichamber is the puzzles, and it’s hard to say much about them without revealing part of what makes this game special. Suffice it to say that it is one of the most unique and creative games that I have ever played. Environments are frequently non-Euclidean in nature, and rely heavily on perspective or understanding the rules of the universe which Antichamber itself has defined.

There is inherent difficulty in designing that kind of puzzle; if you don’t abide necessarily by the rules of physics or perspective that we’ve come to rely on, puzzles can have arbitrarily hard solutions. For the most part, especially in early parts of the game, Antichamber does an excellent job of staying consistent and teaching you the ways of its mind-melting world.

But in the later hours, you are bound to run into situations where a puzzle solution will feel almost entirely arbitrary. Frustration will set in, and occasionally solutions don’t have the satisfying payoff they were designed for. There was one instance where I resorted to some online hints because, it turns out, I had completed an earlier puzzle in a non-traditional way and didn’t have the resources the game expected me to have. It took quite a bit of digging before finally understanding how I was supposed to complete the prior puzzle so I could complete the current one.

One very smart addition to curb some of this difficulty is the ability to, at any point, press escape and jump out to the central hub of the world. From there, you can see your progress and also a map of the entire area you have so-far discovered. You can jump in to any area you’ve previously visited, and I found it helpful to jump from puzzle to puzzle I didn’t know how to solve. Typically inspiration would strike somewhere, and my frustrations would yield relatively quickly.

Overall, Antichamber is a smart, mostly incredible puzzle game. Moments of frustration are almost inevitable here, and for the most part the balance is hit just right so that frustration results in joyous satisfaction when you make progress. It occasionally missteps and frustration just leads to greater frustration, but it’s easy to forgive when so much of the game is so good. Highly recommended.

A game like Antichamber should not be played by people like myself; games that have puzzles that go beyond merely logic, reasoning, memorization or problem solving and into the realm of beating your head against it until a solution reveals itself do not sit entirely well with me. This is more an issue with myself than those types of games for sure, but while Antichamber does take a couple of cues from Portal, this title is a drastically different experience that, while at times went way over my head, I can still recommend to people who want a puzzler that's different from your Trines or Professor Laytons or Mysts.

I'm really the wrong demographic for this kind of game, but Antichamber's advertising suckered me in since I wanted an exploration-based puzzle game in similar veins to La-Mulana; puzzles that were made to crush lesser minds. While I did get that vibe and happily did so, Antichamber sometimes felt like it could get away with whatever it wanted and did so with crossed arms and shrugged shoulders to the player. The Steam store page does say, quote, 'Antichamber is a mind-bending psychological exploration game where nothing can be taken for granted. Discover an Escher-like world where hallways wrap around upon each other, spaces reconfigure themselves, and accomplishing the impossible may just be the only way forward'. 'Accomplishing the impossible' may sound quite romantic to a player thinking about buying the game, but there are some cases where the impossible is possible, it just requires a ridiculous solution. To talk about these cases would just be absolute shameful spoilers and would take away from your experience, but the big pro tip here is that just when you think you've tried absolutely everything and are ready to give up, you actually haven't tried absolutely everything and need to try again. Not every puzzle in Antichamber is this 'impossible', as for a majority of the game your challenges are quite tame; blocks, switches, platforming, interacting with the environment, toying with some anomaly that's keeping you from progressing... Many of these can be solved just through expirimentation, trial and error or simple application of your brain, and for quite some time you can chug through the game at a steady rate, only meeting major opposition when you near the end of the game - And I mean major. Again, perhaps I'm the wrong kind of person for this kind of game, but at some point I ran up against puzzles where just nothing clicked and I found myself spinning my wheels in perpetual defeat, and that's where my enjoyment of the game took a heavy drop.

What kept me from really getting sour on the game is that at just about any time you can return to the main 'hub' room where you can look at a map of the 'facility' (players have insinuated there's a story some kind, but there's no plot in Antichamber at all) and then teleport elsewhere. This means that you can zip around the game and try assaulting a puzzle again or from a different angle, never being stuck against just one challenge forever until you complete it. This is an absolute god-send of a feature, and one that no doubt has kept many players (including myself) from quitting the game with a bitter aftertaste. It's also incredibly useful since you can stumble upon shortcuts or alternate exits everywhere that will take you all over the place, sometimes not quite in the direction you wanted to go. If you keep hallway-wrapping into a room you've visited or accidentally fall off a bridge that melts if you're looking at it, being able to warp back and try again keeps frustration down to a minimum, especially when you're trying to find the matter 'guns' to further manipulate blocks that you need for switches, platforms or other impede your progress.

The 'guns' is the aforementioned cue from Portal, and how they help you get around the game is the other. Again, to talk in detail about the puzzles you'll encounter would be shameful spoilers, but each new gun upgrade you find unlocks that much more of the game, with a myriad of possible solutions and new challenges to run into, which is a good feeling of constantly asking yourself 'what's next?' when you unlock this door or find a way past this chasm. You'll be looking forward to the next puzzle and not to the designs of the rooms as a whole since the game's sterile white environment at times feels just downright oppressive on the eyes, save for the splashes of bold, full colors that are strangely relieving when mixed in with the 'music' that is nothing but ambiance noises that I feel were designed to keep the player as relaxed as possible when hopping around the game trying to figure out a new solution. Color doesn't play any sort of theme like in Okami, but it does serve as something to take hold of your attention and to differentiate one route from another to avoid confusion.

While it sounds like I haven't had the greatest time with Antichamber, I walked away from it (and completed it) quite satisfied with the experience I had, and some minor technical hiccups like major frame-rate hitches during transitions and broken floor geometry were just that - Hiccups. Antichamber brings to the table a wildly different kind of puzzle game that sometimes can feel like it's cheating in order to challenge you, but overcoming these challenges brings personal accomplishment that is its own high. My overall enjoyment of the game left something to be desired, but I can still happily recommend Antichamber to those looking for a puzzle game that doesn't follow conventional rules.

This game is so hard to understand and you it really challenges to use your brain at its best. But take breaks because your brain will probably stop at a moment. The puzzles are very hard to solve but when you do it is so rewarding and worth it. Id recommend this game for sure

I love mindfsk games.THIS is a gorgeous mindfsk puzzle game. You don't have to listen to boring dialouge or pay attention to what is going on in the story. You just do. WARNING: Not a linear game. This is not just a puzzle game. It is an ultra mind♥♥♥♥. Be prepared to ragequit. Worth every penny and second.

After 1 year of procastinating to play such a great game.I don't even know why my brain decide not to finish this game last year, maybe it just got confused.Nevertheless, now I have finished this game and learn every life lessons that is included in the game.

Every single challenge got real life advice from the dev.I admit solving the puzzles most of the time frustated me. But you will get the hang of it when you learn how the mechanism works.One of the advice stated "With more experience, previous challenges aren't so difficult" and that is indeed true.

Truly a lifetime experience, one of a kind and will be remembered as a masterpiece.Last quote "Every journey comes to an end".

Just play this game. It is that good. Some puzzles are tedious as hell, but it is worth playing through to the end. Most puzzle consist of switch activating and others consist of physics that are consistently non sensical, and this is its strong point. I would recommend that everyone try play this. Even if they don't play video games.

Clever puzzle game revolving around the use of perspective and non-Euclidean space in a minimalist environment. Puzzles were challenging without ever really feeling unfair (except for one instance: but it turned out to be an optional puzzle so i don't feel like I missed very much.) Great fun for anyone that loves the puzzle genre and can handle the potential headaches of navigating things that don't quite make sense, unless you force it to.

Things that annoyed me: There are a few precise platforming moments that feel awkward in the FPS scheme, and there was one puzzle that relied on an annoying jumping mechanic where I knew how to solve it but couldn't make the stiff platforming work 'properly' for lack of a better word.

Everything else was fantastic. I beat the game and I still have some puzzles left unsolved. Some of them seem to lead to hidden side areas that only exist for the satisfaction of getting there.

This game is totally awesome and crazy :D First it'll feel a little like Valves Portal but I assure you it's only at the beginning. Some philosphy elements and a bunch of skullcracking puzzles will entertain you for a couple or more of hours! Worth every cent of investment =)

Pros:-If you love hardcore puzzle games this is the game for you.-Unlike other shallow games, this one tells a story, the Journey of life -as it was first called. You slowly see it unveil as you make progress.-The main feature that I like is that you never know what to expect in the next step you make. The map is full of surprises.-The design is beautiful and unique.-The game requires you to pay attention to details and think outside the box, then you will realize that the solution was right in front of your eyes. It has its own logic and its own specific style, and once you come in terms with it, you will love and appreciate every single puzzle.

Cons:-The music gave me headache after some hours into the game, so I had to turn the volume down. It's supposed to be soothing, but I personally found it a bit annoying.-There is no Antichamber 2

If you are looking for different and brilliant puzzle game, you have come to the right place.

Some puzzles can be difficult but suprisingly not frustrating, if you find yourself to be stuck on something, you just go to do something else and things will eventually work out, sometimes you might even get to feel good about yourself for figuring it out.

Having some unusual, but clean graphics, presenting strange physics, but very accurate, Antichamber runs its own league.It's a puzzle game that plays with your mind. When you thought you reach the end, it's just the game trolling you. You will often come back to some visited places and notice that the Matter Gun opens a completely new and unexplored path. Then you will reach a dead end and you will try new approaching techniques.In short, this is literally mind-♥♥♥♥. But a brilliant one. You will feel really satisfied after you get past a challenge. The solutions require careful thinking and sometimes the most unexpected idea turns out to be the correct one. I have played the game more before getting it on Steam, yet I never reached the end myself.Pros: +takes the ''unique idea'' to a whole new level; + challenging and rewarding puzzles; + the way you see the path (and this is actually a real hint) matters a lot; + makes you feel comfortable in its world, as you cannot die or take damage;Cons:-after you discover most of it, there is not much that wants you to get back and replay it; -can become frustrating at times, as some puzzles have very unexpected solutions;Personal rating: 78/100